Pixar Cofounder Ed Catmull on Failure and Why Fostering a Fearless Culture Is the Key to Groundbreaking Creative Work

by Maria Popova Why the greatest enemy of creative success is the attempt to fortify against failure. “Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before,” Neil Gaiman urged in his commencement-address-turned-manifesto-for-the-creative life. “The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them — especially not from yourself,” philosopher Daniel Dennett asserted in his magnificent meditation on the dignity and art-science of making mistakes. What makes Catmull, who created Pixar along with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter and is now president of Pixar Animation and Disney Animation, particularly compelling is his yin-yang balance of seeming opposites — he is incredibly intelligent in a rationally-driven way yet sensitive to the poetic, introspective yet articulate, has a Ph.D. in computer science but is also the recipient of five Academy Awards for his animation work. Ed Catmull (Photograph by Deborah Coleman, Pixar) Donating = Loving

HowToGeek Screencasting guideScreencasting can seem a bit daunting at first. Open Broadcaster Software is a powerful, free program that will do everything you need, but you’ll need a few minutes to learn its interface. Screencasts are often used to demonstrate how software works, but they can also be used to give presentations or do many other things. Creating your own screencast is easy, but Windows doesn’t include software to help.Kierkegaard on Anxiety & Creativityby Maria Popova “Because it is possible to create — creating one’s self, willing to be one’s self… — one has anxiety. One would have no anxiety if there were no possibility whatever.” “Anxiety is love’s greatest killer,” Anaïs Nin famously wrote. But what, exactly, is anxiety, that pervasive affliction the nature of which remains as drowning yet as elusive as the substance of a shadow? In his 1844 treatise The Concept of Anxiety (public library), Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) explains anxiety as the dizzying effect of freedom, of paralyzing possibility, of the boundlessness of one’s own existence — a kind existential paradox of choice.

Being vs. becoming, Wendell Berry on solitude and our creative demons, the best biographies, memoirs, and history books of the year, and moreHey Peggy Fleming! If you missed last week's edition – the best art, design, and photography books of the year, how Rilke can help us befriend our mortality and live more fully, a tender wordless story about how we ennoble each other in friendship, and more – you can catch up right here. And if you're enjoying this, please consider supporting with a modest donation – every little bit helps, and comes hugely appreciated. Wendell Berry on Solitude and Why Pride and Despair Are the Two Great Enemies of Creative Work

Ray Bradbury on Writing, Emotion vs. Intelligence, and the Core of Creativityby Maria Popova “You can only go with loves in this life.” Between 1973 and 1974, journalist James Day hosted the short-lived but wonderful public television interview series Day at Night.aGupieWare: Online Learning: A Bachelor's Level Computer Science Program Curriculum (Updated)Introduction [Update: See also the follow-up post to this piece, An Intensive Bachelor's Level Computer Science Curriculum Program.] A few months back we took an in-depth look at MIT’s free online Introduction to Computer Science course, and laid out a self-study time table to complete the class within four months, along with a companion post providing learning benchmarks to chart your progress. In the present article, I'll step back and take a much more broad look at com-sci course offerings available for free on the internet, in order to answer a deceptively straightforward question: is it possible to complete the equivalent of a college bachelor’s degree in computer science through college and university courses that are freely available online? And if so, how does one do so? The former question is more difficult to answer than it may at first appear.

Seth Godin on Vulnerability, Creative Courage, and How to Dance with the Fear: A Children’s Book for Grownupsby Maria Popova “If you just pick one human you can change for the better, with work that might not work — that’s what art is.” At the 2014 HOW conference, Debbie Millman, host of the excellent interview show Design Matters and a remarkable mind, sat down with the prolific Seth Godin to discuss courage, anxiety, change, creative integrity, and why he got thrown out of Milton Glaser’s class. She used an unusual book of Godin’s as the springboard for their wide-ranging conversation: V is for Vulnerable: Life Outside the Comfort Zone (public library) — an alphabet book for grownups illustrated by Hugh MacLeod with a serious and rather urgent message about what it means and what it takes to dream, to live with joy, to find our purpose and do fulfilling work. I had the pleasure of seeing and recording the conversation — transcribed highlights below. On how moving away from the economy of scarcity is changing the motives for making books:

An Antidote to the Age of Anxiety: Alan Watts on Happiness and How to Live with Presenceby Maria Popova Wisdom on overcoming the greatest human frustration from the pioneer of Eastern philosophy in the West. “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” Annie Dillard wrote in her timeless reflection on presence over productivity — a timely antidote to the central anxiety of our productivity-obsessed age. Indeed, my own New Year’s resolution has been to stop measuring my days by degree of productivity and start experiencing them by degree of presence. But what, exactly, makes that possible? This concept of presence is rooted in Eastern notions of mindfulness — the ability to go through life with crystalline awareness and fully inhabit our experience — largely popularized in the West by British philosopher and writer Alan Watts (January 6, 1915–November 16, 1973), who also gave us this fantastic meditation on the life of purpose.

The Art of Looking: What 11 Experts Teach Us about Seeing Our Familiar City Block with New Eyesby Maria Popova “Attention is an intentional, unapologetic discriminator. It asks what is relevant right now, and gears us up to notice only that.”How to Safely Download & Install SoftwareAll of these programs that I recommend are hosted on other sites, which is very typical and is no reason for concern. However, it means I have hand you off to another website that I have no control over and hope everything works out there as you download and install the software. Unfortunately, sometimes even a really, really good piece software is hosted at a site that... well, I wouldn't otherwise want to send someone to. Add to that the fact that some software programs, while otherwise fantastic, include little bits of "extras" that no one wants on their computer. Since this is the nature of downloadable software these days, especially free software, I thought it imperative to put together this collection of tips on how to stay safe when you download and install software.

Bird by Bird: Anne Lamott’s Timeless Advice on Writing and Why Perfectionism Kills Creativityby Maria Popova “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life.”